55 years of Prensa Latina

[John Dolva]

C U B A

Havana. June 17, 2014

55 years of Prensa Latina

The lighthouse of revolutionary journalism

Alberto D. Pérez

June 16 marked 55 years since the start of the first experiment - in Latin America and the Caribbean - of an international news agency not manipulated by the United States.

Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Masseti, founder of Prensa Latina.

On this date, in a 5th floor office of the centrally located Retiro Médico building, in Havana’s Vedado neighborhood, Argentine journalist Jorge Ricardo Massetti and a small group of Latin American and Cuban reporters embarked upon a journey across the seas of information, committed to reporting with the strictest truthfulness and honesty.

Only a few months had passed since the triumph of the Cuban Revolution but the island was already being subjected to a fierce bombardment of lies, against which Prensa Latina’s revolutionary identity of was forged.

Renowned journalists and intellectuals from Cuba and Latin America immediately joined the struggle for press freedom. Gabriel García Márquez, Sergio Pineda, Jorge Timossi and many other exceptional figures of journalism and Latin American literature were part of the central news staff or worked as correspondents on this and other continents.

Cuban journalists, such as Pedro Martínez Pírez, Gabriel Molina and Manuel Yepe, also joined them. Ernesto Che Guevara was always well-informed on the agency’s work.

Prensa Latina has, for many years, been the voice of the Cuban Revolution and of other Latin American countries which have thrown off the yoke of imperialism, and an exponent of the advances of freedom movements in Latin America and beyond.

On this its 55th anniversary, Prensa Latina continues as one of the lighthouses of revolutionary Cuban, Latin American and world journalism. Granma International, member of this revolutionary press family, of which Prensa Latin was a founder, joins the Latin American Press Agency in congratulating Prensa Latin on its 55th anniversary, wishing it new and continued successes on its mission to disseminate the truth of our hemisphere to the world.

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